Curiosity Traps

Henrik Karlsson’s concept of a blog as a passive search query for well-matched people is being extended into a broader strategy of “curiosity traps,” where public writing and conversation pieces deliberately attract good actors rather than bad ones. The approach involves layering “handles” and “doorknobs” into responses and posts, creating choose-your-own-adventure paths for readers, with each post acting as a hook for a different kind of conversation. Posts are cumulative, meaning a reader may follow for years before writing in about something as mundane as draining pasta without a colander. The piece argues that accessible mass-media-style writing is a leftover convention, and that targeted, complex public writing better routes interesting people and ideas to a writer’s inbox.